[...]
The weakening, which is justified in my opinion, in the status of the "best evidence" rule, I do not see any evidentiary difficulty in the admissibility of the portable recording device or CD that records the content of the central conversation. This is whether it is a third copy of the main conversation or a fourth copy of it. In my opinion, in view of the technological developments that narrow the gap that existed in the past between an original document and its copy, and in light of the flexibility of the rules of the admissibility of evidence and the emphasis on the question of the weight of the evidence, there is no clear reason to disqualify a copy of a recording. This is to the extent that the litigant, who wishes to submit it, declares that he does not have the original recording, and the copy is presumed to be a reliable copy of that recording. In this situation, there will be room to consider the disqualification of the copy of the recording as evidence, only where the person requesting the disqualification will present concrete evidence that raises a real concern that the recording is forged. Otherwise, the recording should not be disqualified, on the basis of the "best evidence" rule, and this alone. Needless to say, objections regarding the quality of the recording or the reliability of the recorder will be taken into account when determining the weight of the evidence.
[...]
Further to the above, it should be emphasized that even if it was the gross negligence of the police officials that prevented the admission of the original evidence - the conversation that was recorded on the complainant's mobile phone - this does not negate the admissibility of the secondary evidence, which testifies to the content of that recording. Indeed, more than once, Israeli courts have approved the acceptance of secondary evidence to the content of a recording, even where the original recording was not found due to the alleged negligence of the person who requested to submit the secondary evidence. Thus, the court received testimony regarding the contents of security camera tapes; edited tapes, which preserved only part of the content of the original recordings; As well as data tables prepared by a witness, after viewing the original tapes - when the original camera tapes were not fully preserved [...] Testimony, as well as a memorandum about the content of a videotape, were accepted as evidence, even when difficulties were discovered in the operation of the original videotape, due to an encoding problem [...]. In another case, the court accepted as evidence a transcript of an offense reenactment tape and the reconstruction report, which was recorded by the police officers who conducted the reconstruction, where the reconstruction tape disappeared "with the passage of time" [...]. A transcript of a recorded conversation was accepted as evidence, even in circumstances in which the reels of the original tape were deleted by one of the policewomen, who mistakenly believed that they were unnecessary, and reused the reels of the recording [...]. Finally, in the Snir case, a summary of the content of a recorded conversation, which was recorded by the police officer who listened to it, was accepted as evidence, with the original recording deleted. In light of the above, the admissibility of the secondary evidence submitted in our case should not be disqualified, even if we reach the conclusion that the absence of the original evidence is the product of the failures of the investigative bodies, and even of the respondent in our case, which I will address later.